Drinking: A Love Story

Love this book

I just love this book. I first got it at a public library and then bought my own copy a few years later when the topic became applicable again.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Bridget Jones Drinks Hardcore

this book is just amazing. I was drawn by the title when it first came out, and I was in my own love affair with alcohol. Even as an active alcoholic, I loved the drama and story in this book- and must have filed it away for 8 years until I realized my lover was killing me and really didnt love me after all. I have heard many women in and out of recovery rave about this book. Thank you to the author for being another step on my path of sobriety.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Inspiring

As a teen to late 20's dealing with alcoholism, I found this book to be written for all women who have faced an addiction. Situations were different but the feelings and challenges she faced were the same. The book is very well written, on a personal level. I felt like I knew her and we were going through it together. I found her to have a powerful spirit. I enjoyed the book very much!

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Real and Bold

This book was wonderful! I truly commend Ms. Knapp for sharing her story and for doing it so honestly. I could relate to so much of this book as alcoholism runs in my family. It was eye-opening and inspiring and I thank her for sharing her story.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Thank You - Caroline Knapp!!! We all love you...

Caroline Knapp was a truly remarkable individual with so much love to give and share. In her short time after recovering from alcohol and other issues she was working through, she gave us her love, wisdom, strength, and hope in her written word. I have never read an author that has touched my soul like Caroline has. Everyday I think about her, her life, and her legacy. Caroline, even though you are not here in the physical form, you will always be with me in the spiritual form. When I re-read sections of her books, they tend to always be fresh, alive, and as if I have never read them before. God speaks and teaches us through people. Caroline, you have given me the two most important lessons for my own alcohol and emotional recovery ¿ hope and love. I hope Caroline¿s twin sister, Dr. Rebecca Knapp, continues her sister¿s legacy by being a voice for Caroline¿s struggles.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Caroline Knapp started drinking when she was 14, and spent almos

Caroline Knapp started drinking when she was 14, and spent almost 20 years as an alcoholic. She was a high functioning alcoholic, able to make it through school and become a successful column writer for a well known paper in Boston. She was so well at hiding her alcoholism; almost no one knew she was an alcoholic. Eventually she decided to get clean and produced an excellent book.
There was only one thing I did not like about the book and that was the writing style, but I loved what Knapp was saying. It was an easy read and very interesting. Even though it wasn’t my favorite writing style, I still wanted to keep reading because it was so interesting. The everyday struggles that Knapp faced and the stories she told were enlightening. It was a very informative book about life as an alcoholic, including her mind set before during and after she was drinking. It was inspiring how honestly Knapp wrote this memoir. There was nothing off limits and as the reader we were told every detail and secret about her struggle with being an alcoholic. Not knowing much about alcoholism I thought all alcoholics were “messy drunks” who broke things and called in sick to work. Knapp showed me that I was completely wrong and it was shocking a great to learn about a high functioning alcoholic. I would recommend this book to anyone even if you are not an alcoholic it is just a good read.

Thank You

Honest, Informative..............

Excellent

Finishing this book is like losing a freind. Caroline was so open and honest about her experiences, I looked forward to eharing form her every day as I read the story. Having alcoholics in my family thatr I never understood drove me to buy this. I cannot say I understand them now but theremany patterns and behaviors I recognize. Great read and I thank her for sharing.

Intimate and Honest

Caroline Knapp tells the unvarnished truth about herself and her alcoholism. Let's the reader draw his own conclusions about the shortcomings of the life she led. For five years after attaining sobriety, she shared a meaningful friendship with Gail Caldwell, fellow writer,memoirist, and recovering alcoholic. Caldwell writes extensively about Knapp in her book, Let's Take the Long Way Home.

Knapp's articulate insight and unsparing soul searching make the book one of my favorite memoirs.

Great book!

Carolien Knapp tells a story that keeps the reader glued to the pages. She takes the reader from her earlier days of moderate drinking to a gradual increase in dependency. The death of her parents sends her from a problem drinker to a highly functioning full blown alcoholic. In the process her personal life goes downhill right along with her increasing dependency on alcohol. I fell in love with Caroline. Her honesty, her insecurities, and her struggles were so well written that the reader almost feels like we are right there with her all the way through the book.

It is tragic that she died so young from lung cancer only six short years after she wrote this fabulous, heartfelt, and honest account of her addiction and recovery from alcoholism.

VERY Good!

This book helped me understand my mother a functional alcoholic. ITS A EASY READ. Well written. I would read it a second time

D Garbage

Nuff said!

0 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

A great read for anyone attempting sobriety?

I really enjoyed this book. It helped me reach 30 full days of sobriety, and any time I was feeling weak and wanting to take a drink, I picked up the book instead.

If you have a love affair with liquor......

As a recovering alcoholic this book hit home in more ways than one. I was much the same as the author...a high functioning alcoholic. It was amazing hear your story told through someone elses life.

Highly Recommended

For anyone who thinks they or someone they know has a drinking problem should read this book. It captures the true meaning of a functioning alcoholic. She tells her story in such a honest way. Easy, fast read.

Re-reading an Old Favorite

When you are ready to take a look inside alcoholism (and really, any addiction) with compassion, to look face to face with a fellow human being whose struggles include being an addict, there is no finer description of a woman's alcoholism. Without cheap sentimentality or self-pity, there is no blame delivered or excuses made, "Drinking, A Love Story" is what it was like minute by minute, day by day both in the final months of her drinking followed by Ms. Knapp's rehab and recovery process.

Both linear and eternally circular, the story flows like life, with flashbacks, re-interpreted conversations and events, although Ms. Knapp's courageous honesty provides a constancy while her life twists and turns in the way that addicts' lives convulse upon themselves. Peppered with wit and observations that many of us might rush by and dismiss, this book shows us the greater human in every addict and the greater hope that accompanies that stance.

Recommend this for COAs

I am a COA(child of an alcoholic). This book helped me understand my parents' addcition a LOT better!

Chemical dependency brought to life without resuscitating the glamor of addiction.

Her fitting some tedious details of her personal life within the matrix of alcoholism may at times trivialize the outstanding meta-message of the text. However, many of my students delight in Knapp's personal touch. This book I've read twice, now on my third reading. And in this reading I'm finding more to the narrative than I realized before. Portions of it I've read many, many times. My reason for my repeated reading is that Knapp does well to illustrate the details of social and psychological dependency happening with substance abuse. With that she reports the myths most of us have about people, the 'kind of people' who abuse substances. And because of those myths we harbor, many of us fail to see self-inflicted damage chemical abuse does. Yet there are times the reading requires a mere surveying by the reader. For the memoir approaches being her autobiography. Which is fine, but her life is really quiet, uneventful and unnoteworthy (sorry Knapp). Nowithstanding her self indulgence, her thesis, that is, to illustrate the love affair she had with alcohol (and still does, though now absent in her life), is conveyed through careful writing, always controlled at the level of the sentence, after sentence after sentence. Her sense of language does well at breathing narrative life into the relationship alcoholics have with their drug of choice. Any reader wanting a lilting text, other than the staid prose of other well meaning authors, on the topic of addiction, this book is for you. Her conscious mastery of the dimensions of both social and psychological dependency stand out of the second dimension of the page to become third dimensional in the mind of the careful reader.

The best

It's too bad that I can only give this book five stars. It deserves more. This is one of the most inspiring books on alcohol addiction I have ever read. I have read this book several times and it always helps in preventing relapse for me. I see myself on every page. Ms. Knapp's thoughts during her addiction are exactly the same thoughts that I had. Her struggles in maintaining sobriety are my struggles.

A Definitive Work on Alcoholism

Carolyn Knapp summed up and explained well the experience of alcoholism. Her candor brought out the little details that add up to great importance; her insight helped me to understand the disease far better. This is a book I would very highly recommend to anyone who wishes to understand the word 'alcoholic.'